She was waiting in the doorway of her apartment. She’s about twenty-five, maybe a little older, with a surprisingly good complexion considering that she hardly ever leaves her apartment during daylight hours except for her weekly visit to the shrink. She keeps her shades drawn day and night. She has this thing about daylight. She and the shrink are working on it, she’s told me. I don’t think they’re making much progress, either of them.
“Haven’t seen you in ages,” she said.
I shrugged. “Been busy.”
“Come on in. Can I get you something? A drink?”
“Haven’t got time,” I said. I sort of swaggered into her apartment and sat down in the comfortable chair. (There’s only one.) Ruthellen sat on the couch in a nest of pillows and lit a cigarette.
“Put it out,” I said.
“The cigarette?”
“I don’t like the smell.”
“All right,” she said, and put it out. One of the reasons I see her as infrequently as I do is that I don’t really like to be a total bastard with a woman. And what I especially don’t like is that I can occasionally get into it, and that’s a little scary, if you stop to think about it.
(Not that any of this has anything to do with Tulip and her fish and her roommate.)
“Well,” she said. “So what’s new?”
“Nothing much.”
“You don’t feel like talking?”
“No.”
“That’s cool. We’ll just sort of sit around and relax. Sure I can’t get you anything?”
I grunted. It was a grunt Haig would have been proud of. I sat back and looked at Ruthellen, who, while not the best-looking woman in the world, was by no means the worst. She’s tall, about five-eight or so, and very thin, but not so much so that you’d mistake her for Twiggy. Her hair is a dirty blond. Literally, I’m afraid; she doesn’t wash it too often. She doesn’t do much of anything, really, which is another of the things she and the shrink are supposed to be working on. What she does is sit in her apartment, live on things like Rice Krispies and candy bars—you wouldn’t believe how little she and Haskell Henderson would have in common—and cash the monthly check from her father in Grosse Pointe. The check pays for the rent and the Rice Krispies and the candy bars and the shrink, and since that’s about all she has to do in life, that’s about all she does.
“Chip?”
I looked at her.
“Would you like me to do anything?”
“Take your clothes off.”
“Okay,” she said.
I could have said Take your robe off because a robe was all she was wearing. She took it off and put it on the couch. Then she turned to face me, her hands at her sides, and stood still as if offering her body to me for inspection. Her small breasts were flushed, the nipples erect. She was excited already. So was I, in an undemanding sort of a way, but I didn’t let it show. I had to go on being Mr. Casual because that was what was turning her on. “Chip—”
“You could go down on me,” I suggested.
“Okay. Do you want to come to bed?”
“Right here’s good. You could like kneel on the floor.”
“Okay.”
And she did. I sat there, Mr. Cool, while she knelt in front of me and unzipped my zipper and, like Jack Horner, put in her hand and pulled out a gland. “Oh, he’s so strong and beautiful,” she said, talking to it. “Oh, I love him so. Oh, I want to eat him up.”
And she did.
It’s all we ever do. And it’s all according to the same ritual—she always invites me to bed and I always tell her to kneel in front of me like a servant girl, and she always does, and I’ll tell you something. Maybe the repertoire is limited, but she certainly plays that one piece perfectly. She doesn’t do all that much, Ruthellen, but what she does she does just fine.
Afterward she sat back on her haunches, grinned, wiped one elusive drop from the tip of her chin with the tip of her forefinger, and told me she was glad I had come. She wasn’t the only one. “I like it when you drop by,” she said. “It gets lonely here.”
“You should get out more.”
“I guess. The shrink says we’re making progress.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“Well, I’ll, uh, see you.”
“Take care, Chip.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Okay.
I feel I owe you an explanation. You’re probably wondering why the hell that episode was dragged in out of the blue and thrust in front of your eyes. Of course it took place during the time we were working on this case, but lots of things take place that I don’t plague you with. I don’t mention every time I go to the toilet for instance. Which is not to say that seeing Ruthellen is like going to the toilet. Except, come to think of it, it is, sort of.
Okay.
When I wrote this book, the Ruthellen bit wasn’t in it. And then I got a call from Joe Elder, who is my editor at Gold Medal.
“Like the book,” he said. “But there’s a problem.”
“Oh.”
“Not enough sex.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sure you can think of something.”
I argued a lot, but I didn’t get anyplace. “We’re not in business to sell books,” he said. “We’re selling hard-ons. Hard-ons sell books. You need a sex scene fairly early on in the book to hook the reader’s attention and rivet his eye to the page.”
Well, that’s why the Ruthellen bit is in. I mean, it did happen, so I suppose it’s legitimate. But I’m not really happy with it, and I’d be much happier if Mr. Elder would change his mind and cut it out after all, and—
Oh, the hell with it. Let’s get back to the story.
Eight
SIMON BARCKOVER’S OFFICE was in the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway. I went into the lobby and found his name on the board while half the musicians and performers in America walked past me. I rode up to the seventh floor in an elevator I shared with two men carrying saxophones and one swarthy woman toting a caged parrot. I got off and found a door with a frosted glass window labeled Simon BarckoverArtists Representative. There was a buzzer. I pressed it, and a female voice told me to come in.
A girl with red hair and freckles smiled at me from behind a green metal desk that almost matched her eyes. She asked if she could help me. “My name is Harrison,” I said, “and I work for Leo Haig. I believe Mr. Barckover is expecting me.”
“Oh, yes. You called earlier.”
“That’s right.”
She glanced at the phone on her desk. One of its four buttons was glowing. “He’s on a call right now. Won’t you have a seat?”
“Thanks but I’ll stand.”
She took a cigarette from a pack on her desk. “I guess you want to see him about Cherry,” she said. “That was a shock. It was really terrible.”
“Did you know her? I guess you must have, working in this office.”
“I’ve only been here a couple months.”
I looked at her for a moment. “I’ve seen you before,” I said. “You were there last night.”
“I was working there. Sometimes if I have a free night I do substitute waitress work in some of the clubs that book a lot of acts through Mr. Barckover. Mostly as a favor, but the extra money helps. Some places you get really decent tips.”
“Do they tip well at Treasure Chest?”
“They didn’t last night. I’ve only worked there a couple times and actually they never tip well there. They figure they’re being taken, you know, paying such high prices for such rotten drinks, and then there’s a cover charge at the tables, so they take it out on the poor waitress by leaving her next to nothing. Last night most of the people didn’t even pay their checks in the confusion and everything. But I don’t like clubs like Treasure Chest. I just did it last night as a favor to Mr. Barckover.”